89. How Do I Recover My Desktop Icons And
Taskbar, They Seem To Have Disappeared
There is nothing more disconcerting than booting
up your PC only to find that you have a completely
blank desktop; the icons, taskbar and start button
having simply disappeared.
Unfortunately there is no easy fix for this
problem. But, basically, there are around four ways
of attempting to salvage the situation.
The Easy Work Around
- Boot to your desktop.
- Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to
open Task Manager.
- In Task manager click the New Task button
on the General tab.
- In the New Task dialogue
box type: explorer.exe and press OK.
- The Windows desktop should now appear.
System Restore Option
If you manage to get to a working desktop using
the Easy Work Around method, it may be worth
attempting a System Restore. To be on the safe side
you may want to restore your system back to the
earliest available restore point. You will, however,
have to reinstall any software or updates that you
installed after the selected restore point.
New User Account
The next option, assuming you can get to a
working desktop using the Easy Work Around method,
is to create a new user for your pc in the hope that
the New user Account will produce the desired
effect, i.e., bring up the desktop.
- Go to Control Panel.
- Click User Accounts
icon.
- In the User profile window select
Create New Account.
- Follow the New User Wizard
to set up the new account.
- Reboot your PC and log
on as the new user.
Repair
The final option is to do a repair of the Windows
XP Operating system. For this you will need the
Retail Version of the Windows XP CD.
Alternatively you would have needed to install the
Recovery Console as a boot menu
item (See
16. How Do I Install Recovery Console). If you
do not have a retail version of XP or you have not
previously installed Recovery Console as a boot up
menu item you will not be able to initiate a repair.
However, your PC should have come with some way
of 'restoring' the system back to factory settings.
This will usually come in the form of a set of
Restore disks or the operating system will
be concealed on a hidden partition
on your hard drive. I suggest you check your PC user
manual for details of using the Recovery
disk/partition. You should be aware that a Repair
should not necessarily delete any files or
applications you installed after you purchased your
pc. the whole object of a repair is to reinstall
operating system files. However, it is wise to
backup any important data just in case.
Using Recovery disks or files from Hidden
partitions are, however, the exception to the rule.
If you use the recovery disk or recovery Partition
option your hard drive will have all of its data
erased, so you will loose everything. Again backing
up any data you need to keep is the best policy.
After using the Recovery disk/Partition option you
will also need to reinstall any software or updates
you installed after your PC was purchased.
To Repair you operating system proceed as
follows:
- Insert the Windows XP cd
into your CD-ROM and Reboot
your machine (You will need to make sure that
your CD-ROM is set to be the first boot option
in your PCs BIOS).
- At the Welcome To Set Up
screen press Enter to start the
Windows set Up.
- Next accept the
License Agreement.
- Set Up will now search your PC for any
copies of Windows.
- When set up finds the copy of Windows XP
already installed on your PC, select it from the
list and then press 'R' to
start the Repair process.